RACE TAKES CENTRE STAGE IN GUYANA’S POLITICS

Ralph Ramkarran
Race was a significant factor in the formation of the Peoples’ Progressive Party (PPP) in 1950, as it was in Guyanese life and society. The party chairman was Forbes Burnham. Its leadership consisted of a wide, ethnic and class cross-section of Guyanese.
But the dominant issue in 1950 was not race but the struggle against colonialism. The immediate objective was the attainment of universal adult suffrage. The struggle for ethno-political dominance dates from the split in the PPP in 1955 and gathered momentum as Independence for Guyana began to draw close in the early 1960s. The ethnic violence in that period was attributed by the PNC to the PPP. The latter allegedly instigated the ethnic violence that followed opposition to the Kaldor budget in 1962, the Labour Relations Bill in 1963 and the GAWU strike in 1964.
The tightened grip of the PNC on authoritarian power after the 1973 general elections in which it rigged for itself a two-third majority, led to new approaches by the opposition. In the latter half of the 1970s the PPP and the WPA advanced proposals for national unity. The PPP’s proposed a National Patriotic Front Government, with the PNC as one of the two dominant partners. The WPA’s proposal for a Government of National Unity and Reconstruction did not initially include a role for the PNC.
The PPP-WPA discussions following the publication of the proposals which reflected their divergent understanding of the strength of the PNC. The PPP believed that the PNC received the support of most of the African Guyanese electorate. The WPA felt that PNC’s support had dissipated substantially, to the WPA’s benefit. But the WPA later included the PNC in its proposal for a Government of National Unity and Reconstruction. The PPP saw its National Patriotic Front proposals as a political solution to Guyana’s political problems, including ethnic dominance, and began to promote them as ‘shared governance’ and ‘winner does not take all politics.’
With the return of free and fair elections in 1992 and the PPP accession to office, race remained a dominant political role, but in the reverse. Whereas, the PNC was constantly accused of ‘racial and political discrimination’ between 1964 and 1992, from 1992 it was the PPP that was accused of ethnic ‘cleansing,’ ethnic marginalization and discrimination, African continuing poverty and lack of access to contracts. Elections were alleged to be rigged in 1992, 1997, 2001 and 2006. It was alleged that the PPP was responsible for 400 unexplained deaths of Africans. Currently, the ‘installed regime’ of the PPP/C is accused of returning to the pre-2015 situation through the rigging of the 2020 elections by over 100,000 votes of dead and migrated persons, facilitated by a bloated list, and the largescale dismissal of Africans.
Based on no evidence, not even one actual case, all new programmes such as ‘Because We Care’ grants to children, house lots and scholarships distribution, cash grants to families, covid 19 vaccinations, flood relief and others were alleged to be ethnically biased or repressive. There is never any recognition of the fact that the PNC had the opportunity of correcting alleged African disadvantages between 1964 and 1992, when it held power, but did not do so. There is no acknowledgment of the fact that APNU+AFC had the opportunity of resolving the issue of ethnic dominance in Guyana’s politics, and ending ethnic discrimination, by implementing its election promise in 2015 of constitutional reform leading to shared governance, but did not do so.
Former President Granger’s Emancipation Day statement emphasized race. He said: “Guyana’s big problem is the problem of social cohesion. You may think that there are other problems – oil and the economy and so on. The biggest problem we have is the ethnic problem and unless we solve that problem by fortifying the foundation for mutual respect, we’re not going to move forward fast enough to develop this country.” Others, like Opposition Leader Joe Harmon and the Working Peoples’ Alliance (WPA) issued statements of a similar nature but specifically blaming the PPP/C for the current, alleged, degeneration of ethnic relations, or calling on it to do something about such degeneration. Ethnic entrepreneurs are busy at work.
When the effort to institutionalise ‘shared governance’ in the Constitution in 1999-2000 failed, the Constitution Reform Commission devised Article 13 to establish ‘inclusive governance’ which required consultation. Four new Parliamentary Sectoral Committees were intended to elevate the accountability of Parliament by requiring State bodies to appear and answer questions. The Constitutional Commissions were to be serviced by a Secretariat. While these bodies are functioning, they are not seen to be fulfilling their mandates. The secretariat and the Human Rights Association have never been established.
These bodies have been designed as the building blocks of ‘inclusive governance.’ The Parliamentary Sectoral Committees have the power to hold State bodies to account on corruption, ethnic discrimination or anything else. Yet the Opposition has never used them effectively, or at all, since 2001. The Opposition has a choice: participate in the functioning of the institutions to establish inclusive governance and reduce ethnic discrimination, or continue to purposelessly flail at the injustices it perceives with one hand, while dragging the above solution like a carcass behind it with the other hand.

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